Russ Teubner developed and marketed a product called A-Net that did something very much like this for SNA-attached 3270 terminals. It ran on MVS, VSE, and VM (including VM/370). The emergence of A-Net marked the advent of Teubner & Associates, when has since merged with or been acquired by Esker.
The SNA requirement on VM required VTAM, which required GCS, which is probably more than you bargained for. And, the remote connection to the "ASCII application", if you will, used TCP/IP mostly, but could also connect through a 3708 protocol converter plus a few other connectivity options. So there are a few issues with that specific product or others like it that would not natively address the requirements as I understand them, meaning it would take additional development work to do it. But the nuts and bolts part of performing ASCII terminal emulation for a 3270 device was available in A-Net. Yes, it can be a pain using an application as "control-character intensive" as vi with ASCII terminal emulation on a 3270 device - but in a significant number of cases, even these types of applications could be made usable with A-Net in a limited environment. Commonly-used key sequences were programmed as "scripts" that could be invoked by PF keys. So, yes it can be done....but I suggest you consider the specific application(s) you intend to use with such a capability. If these applications are heavily dependent on use of control character sequences, and I consider vi to be in that category, then keep in mind that you have a greatly-restricted number of "AID" keys on a 3270 keyboard (usually about 30: PA1,2,3, PF1-24, ENTER, CLEAR, maybe ATTN if you can use that) vs. all the keys on an ASCII keyboard that you attempting to emulate. Randy Evans, Viaserv, Inc. > >I'm curious if something similar could be done for Linux. That is, have the >"Linux console" be defined as CONMODE 3270 in the guest's VM directory. >Now, have a "device driver" which could do a reverse 3270 protocol >conversion. That is, make the 3270 appear as a VT-100 (or subset). The >application would use VT-100 escape sequences. The device driver would >convert these to 3270. > >I will grant that emulating the "full duplex" ability of the VT-100 and >"control keys" would make this difficult. But z/OS DIDOCS emulates a "full >duplex" capability on a 3270, so it should be possible. Well, to those who >are smart enuf (I'm not!). > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
